Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes Series Book 3)

by L. G. Estrella

  The intricate magic that made up the barrier began to shudder under the strain, and Timmy loosened the hold he had on the second set of seals. All of the excess magical energy slammed into the barrier and flooded into the third set of seals as well, stoking the maelstrom of dark flame even higher. What followed was one of the most beautiful sounds he’d ever heard – it was the sweet, sweet sound of success.

  A sound like a gigantic bell being struck perfectly rang out. It hung in the air for a moment, pristine and perfect, and then it rang out again and again, the rhythm growing faster until he was tempted to cover his ears. The barrier blossomed to life, no longer a ripple in the air, but a dome of raw radiance. It grew brighter with each thunderous peal of sound until it was brighter than the dawn. Then, at almost exactly the moment he’d predicted, the sound of some vast bell being struck became a continuous, unbroken roar – until the sound of breaking glass rang out across the entire desert.

  A barrier this complex and powerful was virtually impossible to break with brute force. Even Avraniel would have been hard pressed to break through it. But the interconnected nature of the layers in the barrier meant that when it did crack, it would come apart with explosive force, especially if someone was shoving in far more power than the barrier was ever meant to use outside of an emergency. Timmy smirked. People should never, ever underestimate a necromancer with the time to plan and enough patience to do the right research.

  The resulting explosion was strong enough to throw Timmy off his feet even though they were a little over a mile away. A wave of sound and force washed over them as a pillar of light rocketed up into the sky. Every hair on his body stood on end, and the magical backlash had him stumbling about like a drunk. It was a good thing he was wearing goggles since glass sand was flying everywhere, tossed outward by the wind. The column of light grew brighter and broader until it seemed to fill the whole sky. Finally, it began to fade, and the sound of breaking glass receded as well, replaced by an eerie, insect-like hum.

  It was time to get Amanda.

  “Come on!” Timmy roared. “Let’s go!”

  He waited just long enough for the others to murmur their assent – they were still staring at the Nameless Citadel and its broken barrier in slack-jawed awe – before he kicked up a sandstorm with his shovel. There was zero chance that anyone in the citadel would think this was a natural sandstorm, but that wasn’t the point. It swirled around them and cut visibility to almost zero as his magic carried them along at high speed on a rolling wave of sand.

  They raced toward the outer wall of the Nameless Citadel, a weathered bulwark of grey stone, which had been added by humans long after the rest of the citadel had been built. Old Man’s sword swept out. Magic surged along the length of the blade, and the wall came apart. The corners of Timmy’s lips curved up. Without the benefit of the barrier, the walls of the Nameless Citadel were just that – walls. And no normal wall in the world was going to keep them out.

  “Here we go!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Avraniel had not particularly enjoyed the mission thus far. Apart from the brawl back in the tavern in Kargahd, the two unlucky sand hydras, and the damn sand leviathan, there had been far too much skulking about and planning and not nearly enough actual fighting. Now, finally, she had a chance to stretch her metaphorical legs, which was a polite way of saying that she was going to kick ass, take names, and set anyone who even looked at her funny on fire.

  “Hey, Old Man,” she said. “Try not to die. The twerp and her stupid rat would be sad if you did, and I don’t feel like putting up with their moping.”

  Old Man ducked under the slash of a sword with speed and ease that belied his age before drawing his own blade in a single fluid motion to strike down another two guards. Avraniel gave a low whistle of approval. Damn. Swinging a sword around looked beautiful when Old Man did it. She wondered how many people he had killed to get so good. He might even have killed more people than her. Another guard tried to sneak up on him, and he kicked a small rock. The makeshift projectile caught the guard in the forehead, and he dropped to the ground.

  “I would say the same to you,” Old Man replied. “But I’m not sure the Little Miss or Rembrandt like you much although I would certainly miss you. You have a knack for making life interesting.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll take a lot more than a small army to take me down. They should have brought a big damn army and as many monsters as they could get their hands on.” Avraniel peered ahead. “We’ve got more company headed this way.”

  Dozens more heavily armed guards, most of whom had dangerous magic of their own, were marching toward them at full speed. Timmy gave her and Old Man a brief nod before he, Katie, and Gerald ducked into a side street with some of the rats to avoid the coming battle. Avraniel’s lips curled. How nice of him. It would have been boring if this were too easy. She wanted a real fight, and these guards had better give it to her. Besides, with the two idiots and the twerp out of the way, there were more guards for her to pummel.

  She stood in the middle of the street as the demolition rats that had stayed behind scattered to find better positions. The main street was wide enough for the approaching guards to easily surround them. There were also buildings made of black stone on either side of them that Timmy had said were largely impervious to magic, which meant there were probably even more guards with projectile weapons or ranged magic in there waiting to strike when she dropped her guard. All in all, this had the makings of a straight up fight: the guards would try to take her and Old Man down, and she and Old Man would have to fight them off. Two against what would likely be hundreds. Well, not two. Some of the rats had stayed behind and so had Spot.

  “Spot.” Avraniel knelt down and rubbed Spot’s back. “These guys are all bad. Do you know what that means?”

  The dragon wagged his tail happily and hopped into the air, his wings beating quickly to keep him aloft. Food?

  “Damn straight. You can eat every one of these bastards if you want, but don’t get careless. I will not be happy if you get stabbed in the back because you were enjoying an early dinner.”

  Avraniel was feeling particularly sporting – although, really, it was more about prolonging the fight since she didn’t know when she’d get another chance to cut loose – so she drew her bow, readied an arrow, and then promptly dropped her shot a few yards short. The pathetic losers marching toward her laughed and charged forward with renewed vigour, no doubt thinking they’d have an easy time of it against an elf who couldn’t even use a bow properly. She tossed Old Man a smirk before she stepped forward to meet them. It was time to earn her reward money.

  THUMP.

  Her fist met the face of her first opponent with enough force to do some highly unpleasant things to his already less than stellar bone structure. He was the epitome of a scruffy prison guard, and now he was the epitome of a scruffy prison guard who was flying through the air like a ragdoll with a face that was even less handsome than before – and he’d not been good looking by any measure whatsoever. As the other guards gaped in disbelief – what kind of elf ran around punching people in the face – she flicked her wrists, and a blast of fire that was more force than heat tossed them aside like leaves caught in a hurricane. She watched them hurtle through the air. It was almost funny – and it actually became quite funny when Spot dove after them. His wings folded, and he caught one of the guards out of the air with his teeth. Things then became, as Gerald would have said with a shudder, completely academic.

  The remaining guards in the first group beat a hasty retreat, firing bolts of ice, fire, and lightning at her in a vain bid to cover their escape. Good. It would have been boring if they were completely hopeless. They’d realised how easily she could overpower them. The twang of a crossbow caught her attention, and she leaned to the side to avoid the crossbow bolt that had been fired from one of the windows of a nearby building. More projectiles followed, and she drew her daggers, cutting the projectiles out of the
air or blasting them out of the way with her magic. She tapped her cheek with the flat of one of her daggers. According to Timmy, the black stone was largely impervious to magic. But what about the windows, were they impervious to magic too? She smirked. Time to find out.

  Avraniel thrust both her hands forward, and a wall of fire rushed toward the building closest to her. Most of it petered out the instant it met the black stone, but based on the screaming coming from inside the building and the frantic groups of people who tumbled out of it on fire, many of them through the front door and the rest through various windows, she could only conclude that the windows were not, in fact, impervious to magic. She cackled. How wonderful.

  “Spot,” she said. “Go deal with the ones on fire.” Her eyes gleamed, twin pools of molten gold that promised fiery, fiery death, as she spotted movement on the rooftops nearby. Oh, this was too good. Some of the people up there had to be mages who specialised in summoning elementals because there were fire elementals up on the roof. “Old Man, do you want to go up there and handle them? They have fire elementals.”

  “Interesting.” Old Man stepped back as plumes of flame rippled down from the roof toward him. “I shall leave things down here to you then.”

  He vanished and reappeared on top of the building opposite Avraniel. The elf walked blithely through the flames and seized control of them before throwing them at some of the nearest buildings and roofs. She couldn’t see all of her opponents – most of them had the good sense to hide after seeing her cut a fiery swathe through their fellows – but it wasn’t like she could miss if she blew up and burned everything. Sure, she couldn’t blow up the roofs of the buildings or their walls without using far more power than she was comfortable using since they were made out of the stupid black stone, but she could blow up everything on the roofs and burn everything inside the buildings by pouring fire in through the windows. In some ways, it was actually more fun than doing things the usual way. Yes. It was like playing hide and seek, except instead of telling people she’d found them, she set them on fire. Wait, this wasn’t too different from how she’d played hide and seek as a child. Her eye twitched. Looking back on it, maybe that was why she hadn’t been so popular amongst the other elf children. Nah. That couldn’t be it. They had just been a big bunch of jerks.

  As Spot bounded toward her with a big grin on his face and a considerable amount of blood and gore splattered over his scales, the ground around her ripped upward. Earth elementals appeared, giants of rock and stone that towered twenty feet into the air. She laughed in delight. This was more like it. People were so fragile, but these things could take a good beating even if she doubted that they’d her give a real run for her money. Plus, Spot needed some molten rock to go with all the meat he’d just had. Hopefully, these earth elementals fit the bill. It wouldn’t do for Spot to have an imbalanced diet, and they might even get lucky and stumble across some metal golems to add some much needed metal to the mix.

  The first elemental gave a ponderous groan and lunged forward to crush her with one huge fist. She laughed and stepped to the side. The blow thundered into the ground, and she leapt up onto the elemental’s arm. The creature gave a low rumble of surprise. It had expected its attack to hit her, which was stupid since it hadn’t been very fast at all. Even that idiot Timmy had only managed to land a solid blow by catching her off guard, and he was pretty damn fast for a human. And speaking of the necromancer, she’d seen him use his earth magic to create stone golems. They weren’t much to look at – they looked more like mannequins made of stone – and he couldn’t keep them going for long without switching to a special shovel, but they were a lot faster than these elementals.

  “What to do?” Avraniel put on a thoughtful expression and then reached down to put one hand on the earth elemental’s arm. “Oh, yes. How about this?”

  Earth elementals were famous for their durability. Not only could they regenerate by incorporating earth from their surroundings but they could also use magic to reinforce and harden their bodies. However, Avraniel’s magic was not something that could be handled so easily. Her fire was hot enough to hurt a dragon, so it would take a lot more than a crappy earth elemental using its crappy magic to stand up to her. There was a creak, and the earth under her fingertips glowed brightly for a split-second. The earth elemental’s body exploded. Chunks of half-melted rock flew everywhere, and the other elementals recoiled in shock and terror. Behind them, Spot made a happy sound and gleefully devoured a small piece of melting rock that had landed next to him.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Still laughing, Avraniel threw herself at her next opponent. Her daggers glowed white-hot as she sliced right through the elemental’s leg before she cut off one of its arms. The massive creature toppled to the ground, and she jumped high into the air before landing and driving one foot through its head. “Are you even trying? Come on! I thought you’d give me a fight!”

  The earth elemental tried to crawl away – it didn’t need its head to survive – and she melted it into a puddle of molten rock. The others rushed forward to box her in, and she loosened her hold on her flames even more. Tongues of searing fire lashed out in all directions, along with jets of black as Spot cheerfully added his own attacks to the mix. He burned his way through the chest of one earth elemental and flew over to hover in the air beside Avraniel.

  “Don’t hold back, Spot. Fire away!” She cackled. “Remember, we’re supposed to get their attention. Nothing gets people’s attention like a crap load of fire.”

  Spot trilled, and it wasn’t long before the two of them had reduced all of the earth elementals to puddles on the ground. The dragon toddled over to the nearest puddle and took a few sips before a surge of magic caught his attention. There was a sound like a tidal wave crashing into the shore, and Avraniel turned and bit back a laugh. They had water elementals! Perfect. Within moments, the two of them were surrounded by water elementals. The closest one was even taller than the earth elementals had been. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, but instead of legs, there was only a constantly churning spout of water. It lifted both arms, and the other water elementals dove forward, their humanoid forms giving way as they flooded the area.

  Avraniel smiled, and Spot bared his teeth. “This is going to be fun.”

  * * *

  Old Man cut another fire elemental in half and flipped away as another one of the burning creatures lobbed a ball of flame at him. The fire elemental he’d struck quivered for a moment, its two halves trying to join back together, before it vanished in a cloud of sparks, ash, and heat. He’d faced such enemies before, and he’d learned that a well-timed burst of magic at the exact moment he struck could disrupt the magic that elementals used to maintain their form. Of course, simply going after the elementals was a losing strategy. He needed to target the ones summoning them. Otherwise, he would be here all night. Tossing a quick look over his shoulder, he dodged another attack and then darted toward the summoner on the opposite end of the roof.

  There were a dozen guards between him and the summoner, but he barely paid them any attention. He let them charge out to meet him and then used his magic to warp space itself, so his next step carried him right past the guards and over to the summoner himself. The unfortunate fellow’s eyes widened as Old Man’s blade swept up and forward – or it would have if a giant wave of water hadn’t washed over the roof, forcing him to teleport out of the way as everyone else was swept off the roof and onto the street on the other side. He scrambled to the edge of the roof and peered down.

  Avraniel was fighting a horde of water elementals. There seemed to be no end to them, and they appeared to be either trying to drown her or simply sweep her away. He shook his head in disbelief. What kind of strategy was that? Against any other fire mage, it might have worked. But Avraniel was not only evaporating the water around her faster than they could throw it at her but she was also blasting the water elementals with enough force to flood the street, along with the nearby buildings and th
eir rooftops. If whoever was summoning those water elementals kept throwing more of them at her like this, it wouldn’t be long before the entire Nameless Citadel was flooded. Yet the elf wasn’t the least bit worried. If anything, she appeared to be having the time of her life.

  She was cackling insanely as she stood untouched in a circle of scorched rock, the water around her shoved back and evaporated by a brilliant sphere of flame. Spot, meanwhile, had left her side to go after the people who’d managed to keep their footing on the rooftops. It was almost adorable the way Spot huffed and puffed – he must have used his fire a bit more than he was used to – before he decided to forgo ranged attacks in favour of simply throwing himself at the closest opponent with his mouth wide open. Things then proceeded to get a lot less adorable.

  Old Man’s attention shifted back to the rooftop he was on as another group of guards arrived. Timmy certainly hadn’t been lying when he’d said they’d be up against a small army. On the next roof over, an explosion rang out, followed by several others in the alleys and streets alongside. Ah, yes. The demolition rats had finally decided to join the battle.

  “Who are you?” one of the guards barked. Based on the markings on his uniform, he must be a senior officer of some kind. He also held his sword with the easy confidence of a man well used to winning. Old Man straightened. Perhaps he’d found a worthy opponent.